Ever imagined what it would be like to be alive for centuries? For Tom Hazard – it’s all he’s ever known. You see, he may look like an ordinary 41 year old, but he’s actually been alive since the year 1581. He’s travelled all over the world and seen it change, crossing paths with key historical figures including the likes of Sir William Shakespeare. But now, working as a history teacher in London, his condition has become a dull reality, and he craves an ordinary life.

His struggle is understandable. The Albatros Society (made up of other people like him) controls him like a puppet, making him change his identity every eight years in order to stay alive. And, under no circumstances, must he ever fall in love.

* * *

How To Stop Time is a heart-warming and thought provoking novel about how it can take a lifetime to truly learn how to live. It’s simultaneously heartbreaking, dealing with such raw and painful emotions, as it is wonderfully uplifting and inspiring.

It would appear there’s no ends to Haig’s romantic and vivid imagination, and the seamless transitions between the past and the present day are a tribute to his skills as a storyteller.

From the lively market streets of Elizabethan England, to the glitz and glam of the Parisian jazz bar where Tom met F Scott Fitzgerald, Haig’s use of historic details engulfs the senses, fully immersing you in previous centuries. My favourite part of the novel was the blossoming love story between Tom and Rose in the late 1500s. No word of a lie, it made my heart burst and I absolutely adored this extract:

And she placed the lute beside her on the bed and kissed me and I closed my eyes and the rest of the world faded. There was nothing else. Nothing but her. She was the stars and the heavens and the oceans.

SWOON. Heart official burst.

However, Haig doesn’t gloss over the painful details that Tom saw first-hand either. The witch hunts. The plague. The wars. There’s no denying it, they were important chapters of history and, rightly so, they feature heavily in the book. Difficult reading at times? Yep, but all vital to Tom’s story.

Ah Tom. I love his character and I think you will too. Haig writes in a way that makes you root for Tom from the very first page, somehow allowing us to empathise about a condition that we will never be able to experience.

But, like every fictional character, Tom has his downsides. Constantly worrying about the past and future, the inability to see what’s right in front of him, the fear of letting anyone get even slightly close to him. Personality traits that can all be experienced by someone with a mental illness. When I went through depression, I experienced similar feelings to Tom, and I find it so refreshing that Haig is spreading awareness through How To Stop Time. It’s the perfect book to give those who haven’t suffered an insight into mental illness.

Haig gets the complexity of human emotions. The light and dark. The intensity of the dark, how it can seem so overbearing that living with it becomes normal. But then when the light comes, you need to hold on to it, savour it, seek out – because those are the moments worth living for.

Honestly, explaining to someone about your mental health issues is the hardest thing in the world, and to me, this book beautifully tells the tale of someone riddled with anxiety and depression, exactly how he feels and exactly how he comes over it.

When I say Haig gets it, I mean he gets it. Mental health – the inexplicable pain of feeling like you’re stuck in your own body. But also, the freedom of learning to let go of your struggles – the weight off your shoulders you never knew you had. I think that can be proven in my favourite quote towards the end of the book:

And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it would steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?

How To Stop Time has inspired me and I would love to know the books that inspire you. What would you recommend?

Whilst Lace can be defined as “a delicate, decorative fabric, woven in an open web of different patterns and figures,” it can also mean “to change the patterns.” And that is exactly what Shirley Conran’s book did.

Plot

Lace was published in 1982 and opens with a raw description of a backstreet, teenage abortion. Even now I don’t think there are many novels that would open so dramatically, particularly those categorised as ‘chick lit,’ a genre often deemed as soft literature. So, I can only imagine how scandalous Lace would have been perceived when it was first released.

Once the abortion is over, we are transported to a glamorous Manhattan hotel in the 80’s, where four old school friends are bought back together by a young rising film star who has just one question…

“Which one of you bitches is my mother?”

The plot then flashes back to the mid 1950s, where Pagan, Kate and Maxine are at a boarding school in the Swiss Alps. They quickly meet the fourth main character, Judy, and soon become the unapologetic heroines that we grow to know and love.

Lace spans over about 30 years and we see the women use their intelligence and confidence to grow up and emerge into their careers – in a time when women were still perceived as only being able to fulfill the roles of wives and mothers. The book explored the idea – can women have it all or do they need to sacrifice something along the way? Career and family – can both happily coexist together?

Characters

I don’t want to give away too much of the book and I’m not going to delve into every character. All I’ll say is that together, Pagan, Kate, Maxine and Judy are a force to be reckoned with. They are fierce and determined go-getters who don’t stop until they get what they want. To me, they are the feminist literary icons that we should be talking about.

Whilst I haven’t got a favourite of the group, I do have a soft spot for Pagan. I felt that she was the most endearing when the girls were at school, thanks to both her ballsy attitude and hilarious quips.

Themes

Sex

Yep, I’m going right on in there (oo-err), because this is one of the biggest themes throughout Lace that simply cannot be ignored.

Very early on, we learn that the 15 – 16 year old girls at boarding school are not educated about sex at all and of course, this fuels their fascination, a fascination that all teenage girls have. Whilst the lack of knowledge and teaching is frustrating, Conran’s exploration of the girls’ naivety can be darkly amusing. For example, the girls believe that they can self-induce abortion by drinking a bottle of gin and bathing in scolding water.

But, they aren’t taught the mechanics of how sex works and are simply told that their desires are bad because they risk getting pregnant *eye rolls*. Neither are they taught about rape and that you don’t have just to go along with sex, leaving them very vulnerable very early on.

One of the things that will make you positively rage like a mad woman (well, at least it did with me) is the sexual double standards at that time. The teachers (the bloody teachers of all people!), tell the girls that it is the woman’s fault if a man gets aroused and they are entirely at fault for the man’s desires. Even if they literally just stood there and didn’t do everything – it’s all their fault. Got to love the blame culture.

Speaking of desires, the girls know nothing of their own. They didn’t understand that they could be satisfied too, as society put such a strong focus on men. The girls’ needs were cast aside and when they did eventually all have sex, they felt empty, confused, underwhelmed and upset. This later carries on into adulthood.

But don’t you worry, Wendy – the sex gets better (literally). All I’m going to say is you wait until the scene later on with Judy and Griffin. You’ll be inwardly screaming, “Yes, Judy – you go girl!” and thinking just why was 50 Shades such a phenomenon when this steamy stuff had been around 30 years before.

Power

This and the theme of sex are interlinked throughout the book. We see how men exerted authority and power over women in the form of sexual power. It didn’t matter what age they were – you wait until you see what the school’s headmaster and his driver did!

I’ve got to talk about Lili, the daughter of one of the women, who utters that beautifully bitchy line, “Which one of you bitches is my mother?” Lili had such a rough childhood and by the age of 13, she is being sexually exploited because she has no money, no family and no knowledge of what is really going on. Her manager Serge depends on his power over her to drive his own income, most evident in the line, “He didn’t like sending his bank account off on her own.”

Then there’s Prince Abdullah of Sydon who, as revenge for how he was tormented by Western boys as a teenager, decides he will “have their women.” Because of course, women are inferior possessions and nothing more than that.

Career

It’s sad how none of the women were prepared for a career. Whilst women had demonstrated their capabilities years before in the war, fast forward to the late 50’s and they were still ultimately seen as marriage and baby machines. The classic 1950’s housewife.

As the story goes on, times change and we see each character coming into their own, pursuing their passions.

Kate is a talented journalist and war correspondent, Maxine is a successful interior-designer, Judy is a public relations machine, and Pagan is a business-orientated, charity fundraiser. You go, girls.

What I love about this book is the fact that we see the shift in it being a man’s world to, eventually, a more level playing field, where a woman can make a name for herself without simply being labelled as the wife of Mr X. Of course, there was still such a long way to go at this point (and the case remains in 2017), but I love how we see the women hustle, graft and strive for the lives they want.

Another favourite moment is Conran’s social commentary on just how unprepared the girls were for the working world and life as adults. In a scene where they are reunited at Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Royal Garden Party (no biggie), they discuss their achievements, but are very quick to point out how, in many ways, the education system and their parents failed them.

They discuss wishing how they’d have learned how to earn their own living, how to handle their financial affairs, issues that, at the time, weren’t deemed a woman’s business. To be honest, these are issues that I wish I could have learned at school too.

I could easily pull so many quotes out of this chapter, but my favourites are from Maxine and Judy:

“You cannot expect to skip through life with a princess-and-the-pea perspective, hoping to find no lump under the bedclothes. The bed is always lumpy.” – Maxine

“I wish we hadn’t picked up the idea that you were a failure if you didn’t have a man because then you would be without status and protection.” – Judy

Friendship

If you ask me, Kate, Maxine, Pagan and Judy are the ultimate female friendship group goals. Unlike friends who drift out of one another’s lives, they have an unbreakable bond and this is highlighted when during their teenage years, they find out that one of them is pregnant. They do what good friends should do – they tackle it head on as a group, stand by the mother and raise funds so that the child can be well looked after in the foster system.

While men heavily dominated the group’s lives, friendship was the one thing that couldn’t be taken away from them. Yes, men tried to break them apart, but it was the shared love that they had for one another would always prevail. This was clear in Maxine’s motto throughout the entirety of the book, that the girls would stick together through thick and thin. Or “sick and sin” as she liked to say, in her French accent.

Until the very end of the book, the message is reinforced that sticking together through thick and thin is more important than any man.

Because ultimately, it is the women who save each other throughout the book. Conran writes:

“Together, the four of them had certainly bought out the best in each other. Without the other three, where would they be? Alone, their frailties might have overwhelmed them. Together, they had strength and speed and style.”

The solidarity of their group contrasts greatly with Lili, who has no female friends or companions to support her. For most of her life, she is a lone wolf, answering only to the demands of Serge and film directors.

* * *

In the book’s epilogue, Conran writes, “Lace lies waiting for another generation to read it.”

I am part of that generation and I am so, so glad that I stumbled across Lace on my local library’s website.

Reading it in 2017 has honestly made me appreciate how far women have come and the freedom that so many of us have. Yes, there’s still a long way to go worldwide, but reading Lace made me proud that I can build my own life for myself and will never be defined by a man.

If you’re even slightly considering reading Lace, please give in to the temptation. You’ll fall in love with the characters and their friendship just like I did, and that is all thanks to Conran’s wonderful writing. She brings her characters to life through every single word, injecting humour, heartbreak and, as I like to call it, badassery at its finest.

Some have tried to dismiss Lace purely as a dirty book, but to me – it’s the feminist literature they chose to hide from us, and now – we’ve found it.

As India Knight rightly says on the back of the book:

“There was life before Lace and life after Lace, and nothing was ever the same again. I envy anyone who hasn’t read it.”

I have owned #Girlboss for little under a year, have read it twice and could happily read it twice more.

#Girlboss is one of those kick ass, inspiring female books that makes you want to chase your dreams till you can’t run anymore. Sophia Amoruso, #Girlboss author, started Nasty Gal as a hobby from her bedroom, using Ebay to sell unique vintage items of clothing. Fast forward ten years, and she is now the CEO of a $100m plus business with over 350 employees. There are of course a lot of details missing from this (which are covered in the book) and Sophia’s success by no means happened overnight. But she uses #Girlboss to illustrate that you can make your dreams come true if you are willing to put in the hard work and make that commitment to yourself.

I love being able to say that something has put a fire in my belly, and #Girlboss has done just that. It motivated me to stop talking about my love of writing and just start bloody writing. I don’t want to be so nauseating to say that #Girlboss spoke to me, but it definitely stirred something up. So, I’ve come up with seven reasons why you need to get down to your local bookshop and buy this beauty.

1. It’s raw and real

What I love about #Girlboss is that it’s real. Whilst Sophia Amoruso is now a multimillionaire and one of the world’s most successful women, she’s not afraid to talk about her life when she was at the opposite scale. She starts the book by explaining that she created Nasty Gal to pay for treatment for a hernia when she was jobless in her early twenties. She also stole, rebelled against what she saw as the corporate machine and admits her life could have taken a very different and much darker path had she not thrown everything into Nasty Gal. I guess you could say she’s going back to her roots and by showing that she made mistakes in the early days, Sophia Amoruso is so much more relatable and human.

2. It advocates there’s no one path for success

“I’m telling my story to remind you that the straight and narrow is not the only path to success.” Whilst Sophia discusses here about how she’s been ‘a dropout, a nomad, a thief, a shitty student and a lazy employee,’ I love her main message that there’s no one path to success. That you don’t have to follow the crowd and you can carve out your own future differently, provided you’re willing to invest the time and energy in yourself.

“Money looks better in the bank than on your feet.” Sophia advocates building up your savings rather than spending cash as soon as it comes in. She suggests thinking of your savings like a bill that has to be paid every month, so once you’ve put money into your savings, forget about it and don’t touch it.

“When you treat your possessions as emblems of your hard work, they inherit a meaning that transcends the objects themselves.” I LOVE THIS and have experienced it myself. After my first three months of work, I bought myself a shiny Macbook Air. It made me so ridiculously happy, not because of what I’d bought, but the fact that it was a product of months of hard work and the money that I had earned.

“Don’t live like an SEO when you’re still a sandwich artist.” You’ve got your pay check and are thinking of all the possible things that you can buy. That’s great, go crazy if you want, but it’s important to live within your means. If you can’t afford it, or it’s going to make things difficult for the other 30 days of the month, don’t buy it.

4. It motivates you to chase your dreams NOW

Sophia Amoruso seriously needs a separate book dedicated to all of her amazing quotes from #Girlboss. Another one of my favourites is “fortune favours the bold who get shit done.” This basically means that if you work hard, be proactive and commit to yourself, things will go right for you. BUT Sophia makes it clear that you haven’t just “got lucky” because you’ve worked hard and have ultimately made your own magic.

5. She constantly encourages you to be yourself

I don’t want to use the phrase “don’t care what people think of you,” because although this is what Sophia is saying, it’s a lot easier said than done. Throughout the book, Sophia talks about how she breaks the rules – Chapter 7 is even called ‘I am the Anti Fashion’ – and this is about accepting your differences and allowing yourself to stand out from the crowd. Or if you want to merge into the crowd, that’s ok too. As long as you’re being yourself and you’re comfortable in your own skin.

6. She gives realistic advice from an employer

Towards the end of the book, Sophia states “employers don’t have the time to court you, so you had better romance the hell out of them.” By this, she means don’t just sit back and wait for your dream job to land in your lap, because nine times out of ten, it’s never that easy. You’ve got to show the boss just why they should employ you. In what seems as little as a simple email, your passion, enthusiasm and hunger for what you do should shine through.

7. It’s about having fun along the way

Sophia never started Nasty Gal with the intention of creating her own business empire. She even admits that her younger self wouldn’t have pursued Nasty Gal had she known how successful, or how much work, it would have been. When talking about her success, Sophia states “when you begin with the finish line in mind, you miss all the fun stuff along the way, The better approach is to tweak and grow, tweak and grow. I call it the incremental potential.” This is yet another reason why I adore this book. It’s important to have goals, but you need to allow time to enjoy the ride and gradually grow in order learn and ultimately stay happy and healthy.